Nudging up to Newark

Oops apologies for being AWOL for a few weeks. But don’t worry I didn’t sneakily take Firecrest joyriding down the rapids and we haven’t sunk like John thought; just busy enjoying ourselves. So I’m going to skip through the past few weeks with just a few photos until I’ve caught up with myself. We’ve been travelling downstream from Nottingham to Newark.This rather non descript side arm besides the Nottingham EA building is actually the lock entrance onto the Grantham canal.  At this point it doesn’t go beyond the the length of the lock, but work is on going to restore the whole navigation. And if and when it does open we’ll certainly be back to explore. One of the drawbacks of big river cruising is the lack of pedestrian bridges, this is Radcliffe rail bridge, with 4 cruisers hurtling towards us. We’ve come to the conclusion that cruisers generally hunt in packs and their challenge is to get from one lock to the next as quickly as possible. Pootling, obviously isn’t in their vocabulary. Having said that, it isn’t a criticism, because if we had lived beside the Trent we might have had a cruiser,  a narrowboat is not the obvious or most appropriate form of river transport, just as we don’t think cruisers are the ideal for canal cruising. We’re finding the scenery along the river quite different to the canals, beach life is the thing.And in some sections, desert life seems the current norm. River levels are low but at least cruising hasn’t been restricted because of lack of rain, like some sections of the Leeds and Liverpool canal. Actually despite us hitting 30 degrees some days, we’ve had the benefit of a few heavy downpours and quite a few cloudy days. On the whole though, the weather has been fantastic cruising weather.